Tuesday, March 30, 2010

This weekend President Barack Obama snuck out of Washington with a Blackberryless entourage of journalists and flew to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for a "surprise" visit. By calling it a "surprise" visit it almost seems as though that isn't the only kind of visit a President can make to Afghanistan or Iraq. When did President Bush ever announce ahead of time that he was heading to Iraq or Afghanistan? Will Obama ever have the luxury of declaring when and where he will visit? The fact that neither President has, in the 9 years of occupation, been able to announce a trip to that country is a black eye for the whole worthless mission of invading and occupying Afghanistan. If an American President is unable to safely visit either of our occupied countries without sneaking in and out, then clearly these endeavors have failed and we should acknowledge those failures and withdraw. Every day that American forces remain in Afghanistan and Iraq past January 20th 2009, is another day of failure that belongs to President Obama.

Monday, March 29, 2010

Today on C-Span a caller (Irene from Connecticut) read aloud a letter she said she had received from Medicare. It was really sad to hear her on the phone as I don't believe she was trying to deceive anyone. I think she was honestly confused by the direct mailer that she was reading and thought it had originated from the government, and not some scheming health insurance lobbyists. While searching for it I came across this advertisement that contained several versions of the mailer she described. The company, ArmLeads.com proclaims itself to be a "senior marketing specialists" meaning that they are specialists at taking advantage of our most vulnerable citizens.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Since the American people are not the smartest when it comes to voting, and since it is inevitable that over the next 2-4 years the Democratic majority in the House and Senate will decrease or possibly end, I hope that the party of FDR is taking notes on how to run a successful opposition. While the Republicans did not manage to stop the health care bills that crawled through both houses of our legislative body, they did manage to strongly influence both the eventual law and the public perception of the majority party.

Without casting a single vote in its favor, the minority managed to get over 160 amendments added to the senate health care bill and push the resulting legislation far to the right of what those of us who voted for "hope" and "change" wanted. The health insurance bill that Obama signed into law was a far cry from anything the late Ted Kennedy had strongly advocated for all those years that he was in office. It was a far cry from anything Representative Dennis Kucinich could support with a clean conscience. And it fell far short of what the country needs in order to say we have substantively improved our health care system.

One of the reasons was the failure of the Democratic leadership to fight back against the minority's talking points, and their fear of being seen as partisan after the GOP made such a big deal of how post-partisan President Obama had promised to be. But in this sad tale there is at least the redeeming element that perhaps a lesson can be learned. The party of Nixon and Duke Cunningham has shown that if you play the game correctly, 41 senators can be almost as powerful as a super majority. They have shown that withholding money from our soldiers in times of war can be done for political reasons without repercussions. And they have shown that despite years of leading the charge to kneecap the public insurance plans that exist today (Medicare and Medicaid) it is still possible to pretend to be its stalwart defender in order to confuse voters.

So I hope that Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Steny Hoyer, and Tim Kaine have been taking notes because it probably won't be too long before they will be counted on to oppose Speaker Boehner, and senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, and when they do, I hope they can do half as good a job at getting their way.

Senator Judd Gregg, who came very close to being a member of President Obama's cabinet, has been ranting on the floor of the Senate today about how unfair and absurd it is that seemingly good amendments are going to get voted down because the Democratic senators do not want the bill to have to go back to the House of Representatives. He tossed around the word absurd over and over again when referring to the lack of support for their amendments while in the same breath saying that HR 3590 (the Senate Health Care law) should be repealed. Even if everyone one of their amendments were accepted by the Senate, none of them would vote in support of the reconciliation or a conference bill that would be come back to the Senate from the House.

Perhaps, if the Republicans had not threatened to filibuster the reforms every step of the way, then the Democrats could have entertained some of their amendments into the bill. Unfortunately, they decided to obstruct rather than vote down the health insurance reforms that were put together by the Democratic leadership. Given that it has already taken more than a year to get this done, it is the opposite of absurd for the Majority to wish for an end to this debacle and get the bill through and reconciled in as quick a method as is available to them. If the actions of the Majority seem absurd to Mr. Gregg, perhaps he ought to look back through the c-span archives and see what he and his colleagues have been doing for the past 8 months. He might then have a different opinion of what constitutes "absurd".

While the vote that the Senate will be taking some time this week (hopefully) is merely on a few fixes that everyone wants to see take place, anyone watching the proceedings would think that the whole big Health Insurance bill were still on the docket. It is not! It has been signed into law by President Obama and any further delay on the reconciliation fix is merely keeping in place elements of HR 3590 that everyone is opposed to.

Anyone watching C-SPAN 2 today got to see what may as well have been a replay of the "debates" that were aired back in December. In these sessions a couple of GOP Senators stand around and engage in a "colloquy" so that they can dramatically ask and answer each other's questions related to the Health Insurance law. It's slightly entertaining because of the way that the GOP Senators like Judd Greg of New Hampshire, Tom Coburn (the asshole who made the clerk read aloud Bernie Sanders' 700+ page amendment to stall the vote in December), and John "won't someone tell me I lost" McCain, have been asking each other exceptionally sarcastic questions to make their points.

Judd Greg probably has the best delivery when he asks Mr. Coburn extremely leading questions that imply that anyone helped by the new legislation will not be able to find a doctor, or those with Medicare and Medicaid will have even less access to doctors. Or McCain asking Mr. Greg "but isn't this deficit neutral?" to which Mr. Greg answers "no, it is not. It is a bit of a scam." These are their opinions which go against the CBO scores, and they've all made these positions known before so it's funny how they ask the questions in a tone that suggests they are honestly curious to know the answer and don't know what their colleague is planning to say.

It's really too bad because I could see where a colloquy could be used by members of Congress to have some fair and honest airing of ideas if it took place with members of different parties. If they were asking questions that they actually wanted to hear answers to, rather than just a forum to repeat what they've already been saying, it could be very useful to the country.

Anyone who has read my previous posts about the health insurance reform knows that while I support the passage at this point, I am no fan of the bill in its current form. The absence of a single payer system, or the dropping of the public option are two big failings for anything trying to be "health care reform." That being said, the bill has come this far and needs to get through the Senate with, or without GOP votes.

Making sure that they earn their status as the party of "No!" Republican senators have been introducing a slew of, frankly, common sense amendments to the current legislation. Is it because they realize that this is happening and they should not try to offer some constructive measures to improve it? Is it because they truly care about Americans' access to quality, affordable health care? If only that were the case. These insurance company backed weasels are offering these amendments because they know that if ANY of their amendments should pass, the whole bill will need to go back to the House for yet another vote, further threatening the likelihood of the reconciliation fixes taking place, which will allow them to keep tossing around terms like "corn-husker kickback", "gator aid", and "the Louisiana purchase."

Ultimately, even if their amendments are added to the bill they still aren't going to vote for the reconciliation. We can see the evidence for that in the original Senate bill HR. 3590 which did contain some Republican amendments but in the end, not a single Republican senator voted for it. So, if they aren't going to vote for it, no matter what amendments are allowed into the bill, because they are determined to say "No" to the American people and "Yes" to the insurance company lobbyists, then why should any of their amendments be considered? The GOP has no political interest in seeing this reform have a positive impact on the American people. In fact, the worse it is in the end, the better their political futures, so one must recognize that any action taken at this point is to delay, weaken, or kill the bill. It would be tantamount to allowing Toyota executives select the brake pedal manufacturers for GM.

TIM RUSSERT: Good evening and welcome again. Tonight, two observers and commentators on the American political scene. Both have books that are must-reads for Americans who are interested in public affairs. PaulKrugman, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century"--he writes his column for The New York Times every Tuesday and Friday.

Welcome.

Professor PAUL KRUGMAN ("The Great Unraveling"): Nice to be on.

RUSSERT: And, "Who's Looking Out for You?" by Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilly Factor" on FOX News Channel.

Welcome.

Mr. BILL O'REILLY (FOX News, "The O'Reilly Factor"): Tim.

RUSSERT: Mr. Krugman, let me start with you. You have a simple premise in your book which says that George Bush is a radical. Why do you use a word like radical to describe the president?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, just look at the record, right? This is the first president in American history--in fact, first leader in any history, as far as I can tell--who cut taxes on the rich while fighting a war. This is a--they follow an extremely radical policy agenda. And if you look at the groups behind the administration, look at the think tanks, they make no bones about the fact that they want to roll us back to what we were before Franklin Roosevelt; that they want to get rid of these nasty things like Social Security and Medicare, privatize them. So, you know, this is a highly--this is a radical conservative movement. And just, you know, look at Tom DeLay, the most powerful man in Congress, who is certainly not somebody you'd call a moderate.

RUSSERT: Radical--fair word?

Mr. O'REILLY: You know, I think the Bush administration wants to impose a smaller government on the country. I think they don't trust the government to operate the funds. Obviously Social Security has been looted by the federal government. So, you know, one man's radicalism is another man's practicality. But I'm not here to defend the Bush administration; I want everybody to know that. They can defend themselves, all right? But obviously I don't see them as the harmful, pernicious influence that Mr. Krugman does.

RUSSERT: Why not?

Mr. O'REILLY: Because I believe that Mr. Bush's philosophy is a philosophy that the Republicans have embraced for decades: smaller government; let the private sector drive the economy; let the folks have their money back; let the entrepreneurial class get a tax break, so they'll hire more people. And if you look at The New York Times op-ed on last Wednesday, you'll see George Shultz has a chart that the economy is rebounding after a tremendous blow on 9/11. So that's the supply side, that's the Republican philosophy. I don't see any deviation from what Ronald Reagan did to George Bush.

RUSSERT: Can't you make the case that tax cuts stimulated the economy?

Prof. KRUGMAN: George Shultz is a good economist and a partisan Republican. He's a good enough economist that he knows how to make a chart that is true but misleading. And what that chart shows you is just rates of change. Doesn't give you any sense of level. And what it's really telling you is that after three terrible years on jobs, we've had one year where the rate of change is OK. But that's like saying, 'Well, we're down 400 feet, and we've now climbed 100 feet, so we're back where we started.' And it's not true.

The fact is--simple comparison--in the 2002 economic report of the president, which they--you know, this is the Bush administration that's put out after 9/11, it's put out after the stock market crash--they said by--you know, on average in 2004, we're going to have 138 million payroll jobs in the United States. The actual number right now is about 131 million, so we're seven million short of where the Bush administration said we were going to be. And they said that after these blows. So it takes a lot of spinning to call that success.

And, you know, think above all--when people say, 'We want less government,' you know, let's talk about what that means. You actually go through the numbers, and the only way you can get a significantly smaller government, the only way you could bring spending in line with the amount of revenue that we've lost from the Bush tax cuts, is to cut deep into Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid 'cause that's where the money is. The federal government--you know, a Bush administration official once said, 'The federal government is, basically, a big insurance company that's got a sideline business in national defense.' And if you're talking about smaller government, let's be clear, that's a euphemism for saying, 'Let's slash Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.'

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, I don't buy that all. And, you know, Mr. Krugman is a smart guy, but Mr. Krugman was absolutely dead 100 percent wrong in his columns two years ago when he predicted the Bush tax cuts would lead to a deeper recession. You can read his book and see how wrong he was.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Actually, you can read it. I never said that.

Mr. O'REILLY: Sure you did...

Prof. KRUGMAN: I said that it would lead to a lousy job creation...

Mr. O'REILLY: ...column after column after column. You made the point, in your book, OK, that these tax cuts were going to be disastrous for the economy.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: They haven't been.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I'm sorry, that's a lie.

Mr. O'REILLY: It's not a lie.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Let me just say it's a lie. I said they were ineffective at job creation. And if you look at the Bush administration...

Prof. KRUGMAN: They--the job creation over the last 10 months, the 1.5 million...

Mr. O'REILLY: Look...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...which the Bushies boast about, that is a slower pace of job creation than Clinton had from ninety...

Mr. O'REILLY: We've got a 5.6 percent unemployment rate here. In the state of Florida, which is one of the states that's going to be the election (unintelligible), you got over 60 percent saying the economy is good or excellent. It's a state-by-state situation, all right? And I'm just tired of this stuff.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, I'm tired of...

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, if you think it's bad, fine.

Prof. KRUGMAN: You know...

Mr. O'REILLY: And if Bush made a mistake in his estimation of job creation, you're probably right.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Look, let's...

Mr. O'REILLY: But you paint Armageddon; so does your newspaper. And it's baloney.

RUSSERT: All right. We need to stop.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, this is what--yeah, OK. This is not your show; you can't cut my mike. Look, what...

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, another cheap shot.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, I--well, it's true.

Mr. O'REILLY: You know, you're a cheap-shot artist, and you know it.

RUSSERT: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Hold on, hold on.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Good man.

RUSSERT: All right. Go ahead, you finish.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, let's finish this. The--what we were saying--what I said--you know, people can read the book. Actually, what I want to do is sell books. Go ahead, buy the book, paperback edition. The--what I said was this was not the kind of stimulus program that was going to be effective. And if you gave any of my college sophomores the right to run budget deficits as big as what we're now running, any of them could do a whole lot better than this. What we have--look, these days Bush is out on the road boasting of 1.5 million jobs over the last 10 months; that's 150,000 jobs a month. The US economy needs 140,000 jobs a month just to keep up with population growth. So that's just barely gaining ground, and that's after three terrible years. Right now you take a look, you say--the other comparison is under Bill Clinton, the economy for 96 months added an average of more than 230,000 jobs a month. So here we are with Bush with one year, which I admit is not bad--not great, but not bad.

Mr. O'REILLY: Did you predict that year?

Prof. KRUGMAN: After a couple of--no.

Mr. O'REILLY: Did you predict it?

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: OK, fine. There we go.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But compare me with anyone else, and I think my forecasting record is not great. Economists are not 100 percent. But the point is to claim that this thing...

Mr. O'REILLY: Economists are not 100 percent. Does that mean when Bush misanalyzed his job creation...

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...maybe you ...(unintelligible).

Prof. KRUGMAN: That job creation number was a guess at what it would--what success would look like.

Mr. O'REILLY: Right, and economists are not 100 percent.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I'm not saying they had to be right, and this doesn't...

RUSSERT: What's the next year's going...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...look like success.

RUSSERT: ...to look like?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Damned if I do. I mean, to be honest, what it looks like--if you look at the growth rate over the last four quarters, you know, here's where--it's 7.4, 4.2, 4.5, 3.0. So it looks like something that started out great and is going down to sort of 'eh.' And my guess is that's what the next year will look like.

RUSSERT: We're going to take a quick break. We're talking to Paul Krugman. His book is in paperback, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way In The New Century." Bill O'Reilly's book is still in hard cover, "Who's Looking Out for You?" A lot more right after this.

(Announcements)

RUSSERT: And we're back. Paul Krugman of The New York Times; his book, "The Great Unraveling." Bill O'Reilly of FOX News Channel, "The O'Reilly Factor," "Who's Looking Out for You?"

Bill O'Reilly, what about deficits, the largest in history? Is that a problem for a conservative president?

Mr. O'REILLY: Sure, it's a problem. It's a problem for anybody. And I'm not a big spending kind of guy. I think Bush is pandering to the electorate by a whole bunch of programs. And you know that the No Child Left Behind Act and all the federal money that poured in to try to help the kids, which, you know, everybody wants to help the kids--Right?--states can't spend the money. Most of the states are going to have to give it back to the Treasury because they just can't spend the money. They're not organized enough. They can't get it to the right people. And I am, basically, a guy who says that both parties try to buy votes, and they have ever since FDR. They'll buy your vote by targeting certain segments and saying, 'We're going to create a big government thing to do this for you,' OK? So Bush basically doesn't like that but still does it, and then the deficits rise. But, again, the war on terror is such that we're living in a totally different time than we did in the '90s.

RUSSERT: Mr. Krugman has a theory in his book that there really is a group of Republicans who want to starve the beast, and that is if you drive spending up so high and you cut tax cuts, you'd be left with no choice but to cut...

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, it's not--the driving spending up is not in there. It's just cut taxes, starve the beast; deprive the government of revenue, and then you can say, 'No alternative, we've got to cut...'

Mr. O'REILLY: I don't know how much taxes you want. I mean, that's...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Can we do a number here? I mean, we've got a deficit now which is probably going to be about $440 billion, $450 billion for this year; of that, $270 billion is Bush tax cuts. So when people talk spending, spending, spending, yeah, spending is an issue, but it's--the dominant force in this deficit is, in fact, tax cuts. And...

Mr. O'REILLY: My opinion is that without those tax cuts, we'd be in a deep recession right now.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, but are those permanent tax cuts, right? Why aren't they temporary tax cuts to fight the recession?

Mr. O'REILLY: Good question.

Prof. KRUGMAN: And why are the tax cuts heavily targeted towards the people who are least likely to spend the money, which is people...

Mr. O'REILLY: Well...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...at the top end of the income distribution.

Mr. O'REILLY: See, I don't believe that at all, and let me give you a personal example. I work my buns off, all right? I'm sure both of you do, too. And I make a lot of money. I like to make--now if they raise taxes on me any more--because I live in the most heavily taxed state in the union, New York, all right? I'm paying taxes like crazy. Every time I turn around, I'm paying more taxes. If they tax me any more, I'm knocking the radio out. I'm not going to do it, all right? Now how many people lose jobs then? Fifty because O'Reilly says, 'Not worth it. I'm not going to...'

Prof. KRUGMAN: Did you stop...

Mr. O'REILLY: You know, it's not worth my--wait a minute. I would give it up. That is the entrepreneurial class. And R&D is the same thing and corporate. You tax the people who are creating jobs and creating opportunities to over a certain point, they say, 'I got enough money. I'm not going to kill myself because right now I'm killing myself. And I'm not going to do it if the feds are in my pocket any more.'

RUSSERT: You think we're undertaxed.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, I think, yeah, right now we are. Look, I think Mr. O'Reilly had a show and did a whole lot of entrepreneurial work during the '90s when we had the Clinton-era tax rates. And nobody is proposing pushing those tax rates higher than they were in 2000. So if you--you've got to make a case that the '90s were a terrible time, when there was no entrepreneurialship, to say that just rolling back some of these recent tax cuts is a bad idea.

Mr. O'REILLY: Do you know...

Prof. KRUGMAN: And...

RUSSERT: Why do you think we're undertaxed?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, because there are certain things we want. We want to make sure that everybody has health insurance. We want to make sure that we can sustain the programs we have, like Medicare and Social Security. And you go through, you do the arithmetic and you discover that, at this point, after all those Bush tax cuts, we are way short. We're probably about 20 to 25 percent short of the revenue that the federal government needs to provide just the programs that middle-class Americans currently count on. So...

RUSSERT: So what do you do?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, I think, look, the Bush tax cuts, it turns out they divide quite--because the way they were set up was the big tax cuts were all for very high-income people. And then they threw in middle-class sweeteners, so that they could roll out those tax families. So there's the Child Tax Credit, there's the marriage thing, there's the 10 percent bracket. And it turns out it's a nice 80/20 split: 80 percent of the tax cut is the stuff that doesn't touch the middle class at all but that only affects at all, really, 20 percent of the population. So what I would do--and this is further than Kerry is willing to go--I would roll back the non-middle-class portions. You can go to taxpolicycenter.org, and they have analyses. And they'll tell you--they now divide everything: middle-class tax cuts vs. non-middle-class tax cuts. I would roll back the non-middle-class tax cuts.

RUSSERT: And what would that do to the job creators in the country?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, you know, again, we're getting back only to the tax rates we had in 2000, you know, the tax rates we had all through the '90s. There's no sign--you know, the United States is the lowest-taxed, advanced country by far. Now...

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, because we're not a socialist country.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, gosh.

Mr. O'REILLY: And when did the R&D blow and get into the go-go '90s? It happened when Reagan cut taxes, all right...

Prof. KRUGMAN: I love this.

Mr. O'REILLY: And all the corporations started R&D. I don't care whether you believe it or not.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Going to give...

Mr. O'REILLY: You're a quasi-socialist. You want a big government creating jobs. I want the private sector to create jobs.

Mr. O'REILLY: OK. Wait a minute. When did the R&D that led to all of the technological advances take place, sir? When did it take place?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Actually a lot of it in the '90s right at the time...

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, sure. OK.

RUSSERT: You said the only thing good in Ronald Reagan's administration was Lyndon Johnson's policies?

Prof. KRUGMAN: If you're willing to give Ronald Reagan credit for good things that happened 18 years later, then credit for good things that happened...

Mr. O'REILLY: All right.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...under Ronald Reagan go to Lyndon Johnson.

Mr. O'REILLY: Call any corporation, any high-tech corporation in Silicon Valley, and just ask them when their R&D ramped up and when the machinery that has led the the United States and the world--when it started getting developed. They will all tell you it happened during the Reagan administration. When corporate taxes were cut, there was more income to devote to that. I mean, look...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Gee, what corporations...

Mr. O'REILLY: ...what Krugman is the government to run the economy. Kerry's going to create 10 million jobs or 30 million, whatever he's going to do. What I want is the private sector to drive the economy. There's a fundamental difference between him, Mr. Entitlement, and me, Mr. Self-Reliance. That's it.

RUSSERT: What about the deficits, though? What would you do about them, and how do you deal with them?

Mr. O'REILLY: What I'd do with them is I would reorganize the entitlements that are the bulk of the deficits, OK, reorganize it. And I believe in privatizing some of the Social Security, medical savings funds, all of those things, educational funds. He wants the government to pay everything. That, in a nation of 300 million, is impossible. Ask any working-class person. They're all in debt. They're all struggling to survive. You want to buy a house? Look at the housing prices, OK? When my father bought a house in Levittown, it was 8 grand after he got out of World War II. This same house is $250,000. They can't afford to buy a house and pay the property taxes, pay his taxes, pay the state taxes. It's ridiculous. The government has got to shrink. They've got to get smart. They've got to run it like a private business would run it, not Mr. Big Government because they can't keep track of the money. There's no waste management in the money. Corruption is rife. And he wants more tax money to waste. It's outrageous.

RUSSERT: Give him a chance to respond.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Let's talk about this. This is a wonderful thing because you're talking about this tax burden on middle-class people and...

RUSSERT: I'm going to take a break, Professor. I'm going to take a break.

Prof. KRUGMAN: OK.

RUSSERT: ...and give you a chance to fully respond, OK?

Prof. KRUGMAN: OK.

RUSSERT: Paul Krugman, Bill O'Reilly--a lot more right after this.

(Announcements)

RUSSERT: And we're back. Paul Krugman, you'd like to respond?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, the bait and switch. What we're talking about--what I was talking about was rolling back the high-end tax cuts, and all of a sudden you're talking about those terrible tax burden on middle-class families who can't afford a house. Look, the basic fact is the tax cuts we've had, which is the stuff that I want to roll back--I mean, I don't even want to roll back the middle-class tax cuts, which are small change. But the Bush tax cuts--the total amount of tax cuts for people earning more than a million a year, that's 0.13 percent of the population, are larger than the total tax cut for the bottom 60 percent of families, basically everybody earning less than $50,000 a year. So these people that you're saying are suffering under the burden of taxes got nothing from Bush. And it's people like you or me, if I sell more books than I have so far, who are the prime beneficiaries. So, you know, this is the bait and switch. This is not the real story.

And you take a look at anything I've written about economics, and I'm not a socialist. You know, that's a slander.

RUSSERT: Yeah. Let me go to Iraq. Mr. Krugman said--you wrote this--'Mr. Bush's war on terror has played with eerie perfection into Osama bin Laden's hands.'

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah. We couldn't have done it better, right? We neglected the pursuit of al-Qaida, and we might catch Osama in the next few months, but it's too late. That organization has now sort of, you know, spread like a cancer through the world. And instead we've diverted--look, there was this moment--we had Arabic-speaking Special Forces hunting for Osama in the mountains of Afghanistan. We pulled them off to go into Iraq. And instead we sent our Special Forces, who are Spanish-speaking, who are trained to go chasing druglords in Colombia, and sent them to Afghanistan because we needed those soldiers for Iraq. Boy, you know, talk about giving them exactly what they wanted.

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, the Iraq War was a big screw-up, all right? I think every clear-thinking person in the country knows it was. First of all, weapons of mass destruction did not materialize, which was the primary motivator for the war. All right? Now Mr. Krugman and his left-wing pals throw around the lie, 'Oh, they lied.' Do you believe Bush lied, by the way, about weapons of mass destruction? You still pumping that drum?

Prof. KRUGMAN: I've never actually said the word 'lie,' I don't think.

Mr. O'REILLY: No. You're clever in your rhetorical vices.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, so is Bush. You know, one of the things about his speeches...

Mr. O'REILLY: Wait. Do you believe he lied or not?

Prof. KRUGMAN: I believe he knew what he wanted to hear, and people found a way to tell it to him.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. So you're not going to call him a liar then.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Not on that.

Mr. O'REILLY: OK. Good. But you're...

RUSSERT: But you did say bait and switch to the war as well.

Prof. KRUGMAN: That's right. No, it was clear that what they wanted from day one after 9/11...

RUSSERT: Clear to whom, by the way?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Bush and the people running it. We have repeated accounts that top administration official and Bush himself immediately said after 9/11, 'Is there a way to tie this to Iraq? Is it Iraq?' And, you know, when the top guys keep on saying, 'I want to hear stuff about Iraq,' isn't that going to put a whole lot of pressure...

Mr. O'REILLY: OK.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...down the system?

Mr. O'REILLY: Now...

Prof. KRUGMAN: They weren't listening to the real evidence.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...I'm appointing Russert as president of the United States right now, OK? I talked to Tommy Franks the other night, and I said, 'You know, what's this weapons of mass destruction deal?' And he was the general that commanded the war. He said, 'Before we went to war, Egypt and Jordan told me,' Tommy Franks, all right, 'that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. I passed that along to President Bush.' So you're sitting there in the White House, Russert, OK--frightening thought, but you are--and you're getting your top general going, 'I just heard from Egypt and Jordan weapons of mass destruction are there.' Blair's telling you, 'MI6--weapons of mass destruction.' Putin's telling you, 'Russian intelligence--weapons of mass destruction.' Your own CIA chief is telling you, 'Slam dunk weapons of mass destruction,' according to Woodward.

Now the 9-11 Commission harshly criticized Clinton and Bush for not doing enough to get bin Laden. That was one of their main thesis, and I believe that and I think everybody does. So you're told by Jordan, Egypt, Russia, Britain, your own guy, 'Weapons of mass destruction.' You know Zarqawi, a top al-Qaida lieutenant's, sitting in Baghdad because he just had a leg operation, all right? You know that. You know, as the 9-11 Commission pointed out, there's been repeated contacts between al-Qaida and Saddam. You know all this. And you don't move against Saddam? So they did have the WMDs. Say there was an anthrax attack on Krugman's apartment block, OK? You're sitting there, you had all this information, you didn't act. Impeachable offense. He had to act. That's the truth.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, the truth--look, you're talking all about commissions and governments that were under political pressure, and we have some independent stuff, right? The best reporting was actually by Knight Ridder, which was talking to the analysts off the record and not to the top officials. And this is the fall of 2002. And all the analysts said, 'You know, they're exaggerating this threat. We're under enormous pressure to go and find reasons to attack Iraq.' And you've actually got people who are close to the administration, like, you know, editorialists at The Washington Post, Jim Hoagland saying--boasting about how we're managing to put the screws on these CIA analysts who don't want to believe that Saddam is such a threat. So, come on, this is rewriting history. And the fact of the matter, as...

Mr. O'REILLY: Like I'm going to believe a Washington Post editorial writer over all the people I've cited.

Prof. KRUGMAN: He's writing this during the time; he's not writing it after the fact.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. I know. You're smarter than everybody. You'll reject all of that information. The 9-11 Commission and the Senate Intelligence Committee..

Prof. KRUGMAN: Heavily politicized.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...both have said...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Heavily politicized, and you know it.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. There you go.

RUSSERT: Got to take a quick break. We'll be back. A lot more coming up. Paul Krugman, Bill O'Reilly and Iraq right after this.

(Announcements)

RUSSERT: And we are back, talking to Paul Krugman, the columnist for The New York Times. His book is in paperback, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century." Bill O'Reilly, you watch him every night on "The O'Reilly Factor" on FOX News Channel. His book, "Who's Looking Out for You?"

Bill O'Reilly, what about the nuclear threat, the mushroom cloud? Was that hyping up intelligence?

Mr. O'REILLY: I have no idea. I never bought that. I never bought they had nuclear. I was worried about anthrax and the other thing. But I just want to make one more point. You know, we left one guy out: Bill Clinton thought they had weapons of mass destruction. I mean, it was across the board and saw--like that.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Let me--can I just say...

Mr. O'REILLY: Go ahead.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...let--WMD is one of the worst phrases we've ever invented, because it lumps together chemical shells, which are nasty things, but so is high explosives, with nuclear weapons, which is a real threat. You know, the fact that Kim Jong Il seems to have nukes now has me really scared. The fact that some guy has chemical warheads is not in the same league at all. And Bill Clinton thought, and I thought, everybody thought that he probably had some chemical warheads. They were probably still--you know, they had shells. They probably--maybe they had anthrax. Maybe they had this stuff, which is nasty and evil, but is not something that allows a minor...

Mr. O'REILLY: No, you've got to take anthrax and smallpox seriously.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, anthrax, smallpox...

Mr. O'REILLY: They wipe out hundreds of thousands of people.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Smallpox is a hugely different thing.

Mr. O'REILLY: All of those things...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Anthrax isn't contagious.

Mr. O'REILLY: All of those things can ruin an economy and create panic and you have to do it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, it's not. Look, that's just...

RUSSERT: So let me go to Bill O'Reilly's question, Paul Krugman. If you're the president of the United States and all these people have laid out this in front of you, and you yourself acknowledged you thought he had biological and chemical, potentially anthrax, do you have an obligation as commander in chief to go after it?

Prof. KRUGMAN: You have an obligation to say, 'We want those inspectors back in,' and guess what? We had the inspectors back in, and we were telling inspectors where to search and they were going. And remember, we went to war when there was an effective inspections regime back in place. We did not have to actually go to war. We were doing--we were--we had Saddam pretty effectively caged...

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, not according to Hans Blix. He came on my program flat out and said, 'They're not letting us interview the scientists,' which was a key.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But...

Mr. O'REILLY: The scientists were the key. One...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...there was no way for them to be effectively running a WMD program...

Mr. O'REILLY: No, listen, I know--look, I know that you know much more than I do and everyone else, but just let me get a sentence out here. Blix came on the program and said to me flat out, 'They aren't cooperating. We can't interview the scientists, and we can't go where we want to go.' They gave him all kinds of time, Saddam, to stop the nonsense. Seventeen violations of the Gulf War cease-fire, 17. The guy obviously was defiant. All the nations of the world should have come together--France, Germany, Russia, China, the United States--and said, 'You either let Blix do whatever he wants to do, or you're out of there.' If that had happened, Blix would have been allowed, but France and Germany and Russia wouldn't because they were being bribed by Saddam with oil for food. We know that scandal is bubbling. We're gonna get a lot more information on it.

Now if you put the whole thing together, OK, intelligence, intel on very deadly weapons, defiance by Saddam, al-Qaida presence in Iraq, you have to act...

Prof. KRUGMAN: O'Reilly, I need to get in here.

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, I know. Zarqawi's been proven was treated after he was wounded in Afghanistan, on the battlefield in Baghdad, then he went up north to Ansar al-Islam, OK, under the protection of Uday Hussein. So you say whatever you want. That's proven.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I--look, you know, there--we can go--I'm gonna wager that Blix--I don't--I don't have the record, but I'm gonna wager Blix told you that a number of months before the war.

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, he told me that before the war. That's correct.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well before the war. Before the...

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, it was a couple of months before.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Before Saddam opened up a lot more under pressure. And nobody disapproved of putting extra pressure on him. Me neither, right? But the really, you know--the--and the oil for food stuff, by the way, all of this, you know, might be true, but all of those claims that the French were being bribed, that the UN officials were being bribed comes from documents which are supposedly in the hands of none other than Ahmad Chalabi, right? We don't have any independent evidence of that.

Mr. O'REILLY: I think Volcker has copies of those documents right now.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, then let's hear from Volcker.

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I've reached no judgment that--I trust him.

Mr. O'REILLY: Why doesn't your newspaper, The New York Times, do some investigating? You did 48 Abu Ghraib front-page stories...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh...

Mr. O'REILLY: ...but you haven't been able to do any oil for food investigations. I wonder why.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Because nobody has any information, right?

Mr. O'REILLY: Nobody has any?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Nobody has anything except these claims of all this come from Ahmad Chalabi, who The New York Times has learned a little bit to be wary of.

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, maybe you assign a couple of reporters to do that, you know. I mean, Abu Ghraib, I think we got the story there.

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, we didn't.

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, we didn't? Forty-eight front-page stories, we still don't have it?

Prof. KRUGMAN: We didn't. No. Read the appendices. Read the appendices to the Taguba report. There's much, much worse than anything that most of the public has heard about yet.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. Well, maybe it's right. And if there is, I want to read about it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah. Well...

Mr. O'REILLY: And I know I will in your paper. But I ain't gonna read oil for food investigation there.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But let me just come back. The...

RUSSERT: Bill, why are you suggesting The New York Times won't be aggressive in pursuing oil for food?

Mr. O'REILLY: Because they use stories to bludgeon the Bush administration. They use their front page--here's the deal.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh God.

Mr. O'REILLY: Abu Ghraib, horrible story, awful, OK. Off-the-chart bad. Twenty-eight front-page stories in the Chicago Trib, no bastion of conservatism. Forty-eight front-page stories, all of the last 20 just repetitive, what we already knew, in The New York Times.

Prof. KRUGMAN: So you...

Mr. O'REILLY: They use that story to drive public opinion against the present administration, which the paper despises, and that's the fact.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I think if you look--well, I'm not gonna--you know, I'm not here to defend The New York Times, which has nothing to do with what I write in the column, all right?

Mr. O'REILLY: No, I don't think that's true of your column.

Prof. KRUGMAN: So I don't want to get into this one. But let me just--you know, let's just come back to this. We went--there's a lot of evil in the world and there are a lot of threats in the world, and the Bush administration chose to take this one, which everyone--you know, Saddam is an evil man. This was a nasty regime. It would no doubt hurt us if it could. But of all the threats in the world, they chose to go after this one, and what's really crucial is they chose to neglect the pursuit of the people who actually killed lots of Americans.

RUSSERT: Why? Why?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Because--well, you know, we can only speculate on that, but what we do know is that they had this fixation on Iraq right from the beginning, before there was any evidence, before there was anything at all, and we also know that they really just don't like stuff that doesn't look good on camera.

Mr. O'REILLY: See, I'm not buying that neglected to chase Osama. I'm not buying that. I mean, he is in a position where we'd have to violate Pakistani sovereignty to go in and get him. That would mean Musharraf would be overthrown. So I'm not buying that. Look, again, that's not--Krugman's opinion on this is not irrational, all right, that the tactical war against terror might not have been well served by the Iraq adventure. That's a legitimate debate, OK? What I object to is the lying charges, the slander and defamation that comes out of the Krugman wing, if you want to call it, of the social landscape. And don't give me that. Who are you appearing with today in your book signing?

Prof. KRUGMAN: I...

Mr. O'REILLY: You're appearing with Stuart Smalley, the biggest character assassinator in the country.

Prof. KRUGMAN: That guy you compared to Goebbels?

Mr. O'REILLY: You are in with the most vile form of defamation in this country.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Gee, I have some...

Mr. O'REILLY: You are pandering to it, and I resent it, sir.

Prof. KRUGMAN: There are some people who--well, we resent you, too.

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, I know you do.

Prof. KRUGMAN: That's...

Mr. O'REILLY: And you know what you'll do about the resentment? You'll lie about me and attack me personally. That's what you'll do.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Let's watch that, OK? As I said, this is kind of hard to have a reasonable discussion here. But...

Mr. O'REILLY: I think it's reasonable, and Russert would throw me out of here if it wasn't.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But I think--would he? I don't think so. Anyway--but look, let's just come back to this and say that the fact of the matter is, that with a lot of threats out there in the world, if you ask the foreign policy hands what had them really scared, what do we really need to do with for the last couple of years, they said, 'Well, we got to do more about al-Qaida and North Korea.' And you said Iraq, and they said, 'Why are we talking about Iraq? You know, that's a nasty thing, but that's a real second order'...

RUSSERT: You know, why fixation? You used the word fixation. Why the fixation?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, you know, we have a--I think there's a mixture of things. I think it's Karl Rove thought it would play well. I think there were a bunch of guys who were around at the...

RUSSERT: So it's pol--so it's politics?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Some of it was politics, and you'd be amazed how many--how many people, including former generals, believe that. Some of it was, a lot of these guys were on--were on the scene during '91 during the Gulf War, and they felt that somehow their manhood was impaired because Saddam got away in '91. Some of it was personal. You know, 'He tried to kill my father.'

RUSSERT: We're gonna take a quick break. A lot more of Paul Krugman and his book, "The Great Unraveling," Bill O'Reilly of "The O'Reilly Factor," "Who's Looking Out for You?" right after this.

(Announcements)

RUSSERT: And we're back. Bill O'Reilly's book "Who's Looking Out for You?," "The Great Unraveling" by Paul Krugman.

"Fahrenheit 9/11," you wrote this: "It performs an essential service. It tells essential truths about leaders who exploited a national tragedy for political gain." That's a very serious charge.

Prof. KRUGMAN: I don't see how anybody looking at this can say otherwise. I mean, right from the beginning, the--we had first people around Bush, and then Bush himself, using the war on terror as a club with which to bludgeon the other side. You know, it's--look, I was fin--the worst mail I ever got was I wrote a column a few days after 9/11 where I said, you know, they're already trying to exploit this, and people did not want to hear it. But what I heard within 48 hours was, 'You're not gonna believe this, but the guys in the House leadership is trying to use 9/11, they're trying to use this terrorist attack to pass a cut in the capital gains tax. They're saying, "How can--how can you not give the president what he wants at a time like this?"'

And the political exploitation began right from the beginning. Just eight days after, Wall Street Journal had an editorial saying, 'You know, now that we've been attacked, it's time for the Senate to confirm some conservative judges.' I mean, this is a grotesque chapter in American history, and we need to know about that.

RUSSERT: Do you believe "Fahrenheit 9/11" performs an essential service?

Mr. O'REILLY: Yeah, for Fidel Castro, who broadcast it nationwide in Cuba. You know, for Hezbollah, who wants to distribute it throughout the Middle East. You know, I mean, look, this is "Triumph of Will." That's what it is, the Nazi propaganda movie. That's what chi--"9/11" is, cut and paste, show him, Bush, as a corruptor and reinforce all of Krugman's paranoid delusions. You basically have Richard Clarke repudiating the film. Richard Clarke's a flat out--no problem with the evacuation of the Saudis, no air space was given to them, the bin Ladens were vetted. This is Richard Clarke disenfranchising the movie, all right?

RUSSERT: Former head of terrorism in the Clinton administration.

Mr. O'REILLY: And then you go down the line. I mean, I'll give you one--the most vivid example. Now I don't know how any responsible journalist could actually say that propaganda is valuable. I just don't know how anybody could do it, and that's where Mr. Krugman is.

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, you may not like FOX News, but that is a cheap shot, and...

Prof. KRUGMAN: No.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...if you don't know what the definition is, I'll give it to you later. But let me give you one fact. In 9/11 after they got through with the garbage about the Saudis and bin Ladens being evacuated, then they go to FOX News, and they say, 'And who called the race for Bush in Florida? FOX News.' OK? Flat-out lie.

We, along with NBC and everybody else, first called the race in Florida for Gore, OK? That's not what Moore says. And then it goes along the line down, distortion after distortion after distortion after distortion. I sat on the set that night. I'm watching that movie, I'm going, 'What?' He's telling the world that FOX News was the leader in trying to win Florida for Bush, when we made the wrong call along with everybody else for Gore.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But FOX News was the first network to change its call...

Mr. O'REILLY: Yes, because we were right. And that call be...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...and that was--and that--were you right?

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, oh, oh, this is--no, I'm glad you brought that up.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Here.

RUSSERT: All right, let...

Mr. O'REILLY: I'm glad he brought it up.

RUSSERT: Let him have a say. Mr. Krugman, go ahead.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, because I've got you saying that, 'Everyone has said that no matter how you count the votes, Bush won Florida,' and that turns out to be flatly not true.

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, is that right? How about The Miami Herald investigation?

Prof. KRUGMAN: OK. Here we are.

Mr. O'REILLY: How about USA Today? How about the University of Chicago?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Here we are. Published by AP in November 2001, the National Opinion Research group, they looked at statewide counts under six standards, prevailing standard, two-corner standard, most conclusive, least conclusive, county by county, Palm Beach standard, and under every one of those Gore won.

Mr. O'REILLY: OK. Look, if you want to think that, fine.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Hey, guys ...(unintelligible), Russerts...

Mr. O'REILLY: All right? Now I'll--hold it, hold it, hold it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...you can check this out.

Mr. O'REILLY: You can check this out.

Prof. KRUGMAN: You can get--do it by Google.

RUSSERT: But Moore has said every...

Mr. O'REILLY: Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, I gotta get this in.

RUSSERT: Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me just...

Mr. O'REILLY: Miami Herald, Orlando Sentinel, USA Today and the University of Chicago investigation all went in and repudiate what he just read.

Prof. KRUGMAN: This is not true.

Mr. O'REILLY: Four--yes, it is.

Prof. KRUGMAN: It's not true. I mean, again, folks, this is the modern world. You can go check it.

Mr. O'REILLY: You can go check it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: You can do Google, you can check it. Look for--look for Florida recount. Now what is true is that if you'd done the recount that Gore wanted, which was a limited recount, Bush would have won. But at every statewide recount scenario had it going to Gore by tiny margins, but this is just not true.

Mr. O'REILLY: Look, I agree. You should go into and look at what those four investigations came up with and decide for yourself.

RUSSERT: Let me talk about another movie, "Outfoxed."

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah.

RUSSERT: What do you think of that?

Prof. KRUGMAN: You know, it's a--basically this is a guy who let his VCR--they did a lot of taping of FOX News and they produced a pretty--the kind of picture that you couldn't do on your own. It's a very cheaply made, very--you know, but it gives you a picture of a network that is very much a propaganda arm. And, you know, we can go through that lots of ways, but...

RUSSERT: Of whom? Propaganda of whom?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Of the right, of the Republican Party, or if you just like of Rupert Murdoch.

RUSSERT: And so the broadcasters and journalists on FOX News take marching orders?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Of course they do. I mean, if your fantasy was that there was a memo every morning that told you how we're gonna cover the news so as to slant it, their fantasy would be right. We've now got copies of the memo.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. Well, look, Mr. Krugman lives in a world of his own. He embraces propaganda of the worst kind, and that's why I have very little regard for his professional analysis. I'll give you one example about that stupid thing. They put together a collage of me telling people to shut up, OK? In one of the--and this is just one. I can give you a hundred, but I don't want to waste time on it. In one of the discussions I had, I was talking to a young gay guy who was in a lot of trouble because he had outed himself in high school. And I said, 'Why don't you just shut up about your sex life?' That's what I said to him. They cut it to, 'Why don't you just shut up?' That is about as dishonest as it gets.

I can take tape of you, Tim Russert, over the last five years and I can make you look like anything I want you--to make you look like. And you know it. You know how it's done. I can make you look like a Communist. I can make you look like a fascist. That's what this guy did.

The New York Times acts as a de facto publicist for these kinds of vehicles. "Fahrenheit," this stupid thing, Stuart Smalley's defamation, every left-wing book that comes down the pipe. You know, I've had three number-one New York Times best-sellers, they haven't reviewed any of them. Every left-wing smear book that comes down stands alone. They take stuff out, like he just did, and say, 'Oh, that FOX, it's a propa--oh, yeah, of course.' I have provable stuff of what they do, and I'll stand on it.

RUSSERT: Do you think that FOX News Channel has a conservative spin to it?

Mr. O'REILLY: If you look at the FOX News commentators in prime time, starting with Hume and ending with Van Susteren, it comes right down the line, OK? Van Susteren is a liberal, Colmes is a liberal, Hannity is a conservative, I'm a traditionalist, Shepard Smith is really nothing and--you know, he's just in--a neutral guy, in the neutral zone, and Hume, I would say that he's slightly conservative, but certainly no bomb thrower. All right?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Unbelievable.

Mr. O'REILLY: It is unbelievable because you don't know what you're talking about. We put more liberals on the air than conservatives. We put more liberal voices on the air than conservatives, and we can--we have a tally every day of what we put on. There is no talking points. There is no marching order. It doesn't exist. But these people, they want you to think that. But here's the bottom line. In the Democratic convention, "The Factor" killed CNN and MSNBC from 8 to 9. You've got to assume many Republicans weren't even watching that. It was an independent Democratic audience primarily. Wiped them off the face of the Earth. And the reason is, the people know we give voice to all sides, unlike this guy and his newspaper.

RUSSERT: I'm gonna come back and give you a chance to respond...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah.

RUSSERT: ...in full. Paul Krugman is here, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century." Bill O'Reilly, "Who's Looking Out for You?" We'll be right back.

(Announcements)

RUSSERT: And we're back.

Paul Krugman, you can respond.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah. Actually I just want to say a word about "Fahrenheit 9/11," just to talk a little bit about Bill O'Reilly's credibility on this. Bill has said on air that Michael Moore believes that we are an evil country, and if you saw the film, you know that's not true, and actually you denied in the same program that you'd said what you just said. But anyways, I think that's a little bit of something to look out for with credibility.

Mr. O'REILLY: You want to quote me and give me the date of the program?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, sure. June 28th on "The Radio Factor."

Mr. O'REILLY: On "The Radio Factor."

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yup. Not the...

Mr. O'REILLY: You're taking it not out of context, are you?

Prof. KRUGMAN: No, not at all out of context.

Mr. O'REILLY: Michael Moore has gone around the Europ--in the European press and said...

Prof. KRUGMAN: All right. Oh, come on.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...Americans are stupid, OK?

Prof. KRUGMAN: That's taken out of context. This week--the radio clip's available, MediaMatters.org.

Mr. O'REILLY: It is. All right, fine.

Prof. KRUGMAN: So go ahead. Anyway, but let me--let me--want to talk about convention coverage for a bit. Couple of things about the convention coverage. I don't know who was watching which thing. I think anyone who didn't watch it--your boss is not gonna like this either--anyone who didn't watch it on C-SPAN unfiltered was just being a fool, because all of the--all of the coverage was--on the cable networks was a lot of commentators breaking over, talking over the speeches. It didn't--FOX showed less of the speeches than any--than either of the other cable news networks. Just less coverage. You know, Al Gore gave a speech. It should have been interesting to watch. Even if you hate him, even if you think he's a lousy guy, he did, after all, get more votes than his opponent in the last election. Be curious to see, but you went right over him.

Mr. O'REILLY: I had an advance copy of the speech. There wasn't anything in there that wasn't partisan stuff, and we're not gonna do it on the Republican...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh. What happened--could we report the other side?

Mr. O'REILLY: Well, I'm in analysis, Krugman.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah.

Mr. O'REILLY: If you don't get that by now, you're never gonna get it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, you know...

Mr. O'REILLY: It's just like you. You're an op-ed guy. You don't go out and report.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah.

Mr. O'REILLY: You write op-ed. I analyze.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Right. Exactly. So...

Mr. O'REILLY: All during the day we report what happens.

Prof. KRUGMAN: But that's the point. The question was: What was the coverage? Now in terms of...

Mr. O'REILLY: The coverage was what we wanted it to be, not dictated by you or anybody else...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Right.

Mr. O'REILLY: ...and we'll do the same thing with the Republicans.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Well, that's--well, let's see if you give equal numbers of hours...

Mr. O'REILLY: Absolutely. I will on my program.

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...let's see--will you?

Mr. O'REILLY: Yes, I will.

Prof. KRUGMAN: We're watching.

Mr. O'REILLY: And where did you get that little evil quote, by the way? You don't listen to "The Radio Factor."

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, no, but I get--but they have video clips. They have--they have a clip.

Mr. O'REILLY: Oh, who--well, who gave it to you?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, it is MediaMatters.

Mr. O'REILLY: MediaMatters. Oh, I see. A real objective Web site.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Hey, wait a second...

Mr. O'REILLY: Hey, Mr. Propaganda, you ought to take and do your own research, pal, and stop taking the left-wing garbage and throwing it out there for the folks.

Prof. KRUGMAN: What have I said that's false?

Mr. O'REILLY: Do your own research.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Come on.

Mr. O'REILLY: That's out of context, and you know it.

Prof. KRUGMAN: It helps me. It is not.

Mr. O'REILLY: It helps you, baloney.

Prof. KRUGMAN: They've got the clip. You guys can listen to it.

Mr. O'REILLY: You are about the most unobjective person on the face of the--MediaMatters...

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, come on.

Mr. O'REILLY: Why don't you just call Fidel? Call him up and have at it. He'll tell you what's going on.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, wonderful. Now that we got the great ...(unintelligible) ends up being a Communist.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Yeah, the quote is, 'So this is the United States, who has freed the world from communism, freed the world from fascism, from the axis powers, freed the Pacific from Japanese, OK? All of this, but according to Moore we bring sadness and misery to places all around the globe.'

Mr. O'REILLY: That's right. He said that.

Prof. KRUGMAN: 'This says Michael Moore. He believes this. He believes that we are an evil country.' Now I saw a film, a flawed film, a lot of things that were overstated...

Mr. O'REILLY: OK. Read...

Prof. KRUGMAN: ...but I think that there were a lot of things in that film that showed that this is a guy who really does love his country.

Mr. O'REILLY: All right. You want to think he loves his country, you go (unintelligible).

Prof. KRUGMAN: And he loves the working pow--people of America, and if you could watch that...

Mr. O'REILLY: Hezbollah feels the same way that you do.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Oh, come on. Guilt by association.

Mr. O'REILLY: Come on what?

Prof. KRUGMAN: Somebody picks it up, somebody picks up, you know, there are--there are--there are actual--there are right-wing hate groups who like to quote you. Do you think that makes you guilty of everything that they do?

Mr. O'REILLY: You know what? I never call those right-wing hate groups up to get my quotes.

Prof. KRUGMAN: That's...

Mr. O'REILLY: You call the left-wing hate groups up to get your propaganda. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Do your own research.

Prof. KRUGMAN: This--somebody who runs a Web site that's the equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan?

Mr. O'REILLY: Do your own research. Do your own research.

Prof. KRUGMAN: Come on, guy.

RUSSERT: All right. To be continued. Paul Krugman. You can read him Tuesdays and Fridays in The New York Times. His book, "The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century." Bill O'Reilly, you can listen to him every day on the radio, watch "The O'Reilly Factor" on FOX News Channel. "Who's Looking Out for You?"

Wake up Spineless Senate Democrats! At this moment the Republicans are right where you want them to be. For the next week (please don't make it more than a week) you will have the opportunity to discuss and debate (though really you'll just be clearing the procedural hurdles thrown in front of you by the Republicans) the reconciliation "fix" that the House has just sent your way. You should be able to get more than the 51 votes required, and if you can't do it easily, SHAME them.

Explain clearly to the American people that a vote against the fix is a vote FOR the original Senate bill with the Gator Aid, the Louisiana Purchase and the Cornhusker Kickback. Get out there on CNN, on MSNBC, and yes, even FoxNews and tell the American people that if the Senate fails to act now, the original Senate bill remains the law of the land with all of that wasteful corrupt money. That a vote against the reconciliation fix, or attempts to filibuster are really votes for special deals and siphoned money. If you explain this to the American people, and remember to speak slowly and pronounce each syllable clearly, you might get more than 51 votes. You might even get more than 60 votes. Hell, if you really get the message out, you might get some real bi-partisan action on the "fix".

Sunday, March 21, 2010

Tonight the House of Representatives passed the sweeping Health Insurance Reform legislation known as HR 3590 or better known as the Senate bill. At the time of this writing the House is in a position to also pass the Reconciliation Bill (HR 4872) which attempts to fix many of the problems with the Senate bill.

While this might seem like a victory, no one should fool themselves into thinking the fight for Health Care Reform is over. The Senate will still need to deal with the Reconciliation fixes and we, the people, will need to stay on them to help the Senate Democrats push through the many road blocks that Mr. McConnell and his cohorts will try to throw up in the way of starting to fix America's broken health care system.

I wish that I was as optimistic as Charles Krauthammer is pessimistic when he disparagingly remarks that this is the start of nationalized health care for this country. If only we were fortunate enough to have a nationalized health care system that doesn't worry about CEO profits and compensation but instead, focuses on the health and wellbeing of the people of this country. We have begun to change the health care system but we have so much further to go, so keep calling your Senators, and your House Representatives and thank the ones that have stuck by this and chastise those who have not.

It is also important to note that as the Republicans and 30+ Democrats vote against the Reconciliation bill that fixes many of the problems of the Senate bill (Cornhusker kickback, Louisiana purchase, Gator Aid) they are in essence voting FOR those things that they criticized. Sadly, not enough of the hollow talking heads on Cable News will take these politicians to task for voting for these things they cried foul about just last week. Such is politics.

Saturday, March 20, 2010

After 15 months of discussions, debates, procedural votes, false hope inspiring votes, disappointing special elections, televised summits, gut wrenching compromises, childish use of props, fear mongering television pundits, and Dennis Kucinich being force fed a bowl of shit that he had to eat on camera, we are now approaching the latest best hope for some sort of health insurance reform. Let me say clearly that the current bills suck. They are absolutely the wrong way to fix health care in America but it's all we've got right now so get on those phones and call your representatives to support the vote.

What's wrong with the bill?

Leave aside the twitter #hcr tag for the moment and recognize that this bill is not Health Care Reform, but rather Health Insurance Reform. This bill attempts to fix the massive problems in the health care system without fundamentally changing the system itself. What we need to overhaul the American health care system so that it is fair, efficient, and accessible to all. By mandating that people purchase insurance without the guarantee of a public option, the bill will ensure that tax payers money will be directed to the insurance companies which will, at some point, trickle down to the doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and hospitals that treat patients. By not creating a single payer system the bill will continue to guarantee that insurance companies get to keep a third of all monies spent on health care as company profits. And if the Stupak language or measures similar to it are included in the bill, it will force private insurance companies to drop, or make so complicated that most women will not purchase, coverage for abortions. The Stupak language, going even further than the Hyde Amendment would require women to not only sign up separately for abortion coverage, but would have to pay a separate premium for that service if the need should ever arise. This has nothing to do with their claims that they want to prevent federal money from paying for abortions, and everything to do with their goals to outlaw the procedure, something that should not be tangled into an already complex issue like health care reform. Simply put, this bill does not go far enough to effectively reform health care, so if we were at this point in March of 2009 I would advocate that we kill this bill and start over, but we are not in March of 2009.

If Medicare is so wonderful, why don't we expand it to everyone?

Thanks to Senator Coburn's (R-OK) obstructionist move back in December, the American public was denied the opportunity for even the debate on a single payer system. This was really too bad because one of the first things the Republicans did to oppose health care reform was to talk of the money that would be taken from Medicare, America's first single payer system. It was ironic and refreshing to see the very same people who year after year have attempted to kill the federal government's most popular program wax day and night on the cable news channels about how important Medicare is and why we must protect it. It would have been wonderful if, there on the Senate floor, members could have been asked to their faces if Medicare is so wonderful, why then are we denying it to the majority of the country because they aren't 65 yet? Why not expand Medicare to those 55 and up as a buy-in program? Or 45 and up? Or, better yet, expand it to everyone and stop wasting the 20% that the insurance companies are spending on CEO salaries, and unnecessary paperwork that wastes doctors' time.

But if it's wrong, why should Congress pass it?

As has been said over and over by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid, we cannot afford to wait any longer to address the fundamental flaws in our privatized health care system. Too many people are suffering from the tactics and games that the insurance companies are playing with the lives of the American people. Too many people are forced to stay with terrible insurers because they know that with their pre-existing conditions, they will never get coverage elsewhere. Too many people are stuck working jobs they hate because the fear of not being able to find insurance in the individual market is daunting, and rightly so. Too many people are ignorant of the fact that America is spending far more per capita on its health care than any other developed country and not getting better outcomes. Too many people are falling for the Glen Becks and Sean Hannitys who spew lies castigating publicly provided health care while simultaneously pretending to defend medicare. We need Congress to pass this bill so that we can move on and deal with one of the many other issues that the country should be working on at the moment.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

After reading the USA Today article about an organized fight brewing against the teaching of Climate Change along the same lines as Evolution, I am left with one overriding thought. Go ahead South Dakota and Kentucky. Go ahead and do a disservice to the children in your state by making them even dumber than the generation before them. Go ahead and make the children of your state the laughing stock of whatever part of the country they go to that has not crippled education for ideological goals.

But why stop there? If you're going to aim to be the most ignorant state in the union why stop at Climate Change and Evolution? Make teachers teach a more balanced view of math. Sure, 2 + 2 = 4 in those liberal states but Kentuckians and South Dakotans should not be bound by that elitist mentality of arithmetic. And just because some book worm somewhere says that America has 50 states, is no reason that individual states should be bound by such a despotic "facts."